Great Seal of the United States

[Unnamed]

While reading up on the Great Seal of the US, I read through this wikipedia article. Now, there has been some discussion in the Christogenea chat about Ben Franklin and exactly what his religious beliefs were. I found this section interesting... not that it defines his beliefs per se, but that it outright shows the esteem in which the Founders held both Scripture and the Anglo-Saxon people:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Seal ... es#History

The first committee consisted of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams. While they were three of the five primary authors of the Declaration of Independence, they had little experience in heraldry and sought the help of Pierre Eugene du Simitiere, an artist living in Philadelphia who would later also design the state seals of Delaware and New Jersey and start a museum of the Revolutionary War. Each of these men proposed a design for the seal.

Franklin chose an allegorical scene from Exodus, described in his notes as "Moses standing on the Shore, and extending his Hand over the Sea, thereby causing the same to overwhelm Pharaoh who is sitting in an open Chariot, a Crown on his Head and a Sword in his Hand. Rays from a Pillar of Fire in the Clouds reaching to Moses, to express that he acts by Command of the Deity." Motto, "Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God." Jefferson suggested a depiction of the Children of Israel in the wilderness, led by a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night for the front of the seal; and Hengest and Horsa, the two brothers who were the legendary leaders of the first Anglo-Saxon settlers in Britain, for the reverse side of the seal. Adams chose a painting known as the "Judgment of Hercules" where the young Hercules must choose to travel either on the flowery path of self-indulgence or the rugged, more difficult, uphill path of duty to others and honor to himself.

I'm surprised these statements were allowed to stay in Wikipedia.

[EighthDayWoman]

Benjamin franklin and the founding fathers were adamantly opposed to the jews. They knew the jews would see the the Constitution as a piece of paper, thus destroying our Christian Republic. They feverently spoke against letting the jews into our country, government, and money system. Also good to note is the founding fathers went into prayer for days in a room and came out and wrote the Constitution of the United States. Every official document in our once Christian Republic is written in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ( the jews finally managed to remove that this year), and they built the government of the land under Christian principles outlined in scripture as in the days of Moses after leaving the land of Egypt. So, it makes sense they would see this as depiction of Moses as prophetic. Here are some quotes that Jewpedia left out. Quite """Anit-Semetic"" humph

"U.S Founding Fathers' Statements Concerning the Jews "

They (the Jews) work more effectively against us than the enemy's armies. They are a
hundred times more dangerous to our liberties and the great cause we are engaged in. It is
much to be lamented that each state, long ago, has not hunted them down as pests to society
and the greatest enemies we have to the happiness of America."

Source: Maxims of George Washington by A.A. Appleton & Co. As the American colonies rose in revolt against political oppression occasioned by the attempt
of Jewish banking houses in Europe to consolidate their economic foothold in the New World,
no man among the Founding Fathers was more alert to the designs of international Jewry
than that shrewd elder statesman of the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin. Perhaps
Ben Franklin's most damning indictment of Jewry was contained in his famous prophecy at
the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia. In one of the most anti-Jewish
utterances of all time, he declared:

"I fully agree with General Washington, that we must protect this young nation from an
insidious influence and impenetration. That menace, gentlemen, is the Jews. In whatever
country Jews have settled in any great number, they have lowered its moral tone; depreciated
its commercial integrity; have segregated themselves and have not been assimilated; have
sneered at and tried to undermine the Christian religion upon which that nation was founded
by objecting to its restrictions; have built up a state within a state; and when opposed have
tried to strangle that country to death financially, as in the case of Spain and Portugal.

"For over 1700 hundred years, the Jews have been bewailing their sad fate in that they have
been exiled from their homeland, as they call Palestine. But, gentlemen, did the world give it
to them in fee simple, they would at once find some reason for not returning. Why? Because
they are vampires, and vampires do not live on vampires. They cannot live only amongst
themselves. They must subsist on Christians and other people not of their race. If you do not
exclude them from these United States in the Constitution, in less than 200 years they will
have swarmed here in such great numbers that they will dominate and devour the land, and
change our form of government, for which we Americans have shed our blood, given our
lives, our substance, and jeopardized our liberty.

"If you do not exclude them, in less than 200 years our descendants will be working in the
fields to furnish them substance, while they will be in the counting houses rubbing their hands.
I warn you, gentlemen, if you do not exclude the Jews for all time, your children will curse you
in your graves. Jews, gentlemen, are Asiatics, let them be born where they will or how many
generations they are away from Asia, they will never be otherwise. Their ideas do not conform
to an American's, and will not even though they live among us ten generations. A leopard
cannot change its spots. Jews are Asiatics, are a menace to this country if permitted
entrance, and should be excluded by this Constitutional Convention."

Franklin's remarks were recorded in "Chit Chat Around the Table During Intermissions," a
section of the Diary of Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina. Pickney (1746-1825)
attended the Convention as a delegate, and took down excerpts of some of the outstanding
addresses and discourses, which he later published in his diary. Perhaps the best proof of the
Franklin prophecy--as with any prophecy--lies in its actual fulfillment. What Benjamin Franklin
foresaw as an ominous possibility in 1787 has today--a little over two hundred years later--
become painful reality.

[Staropramen]

Removal of a shortened version of the above quote from the Franklin Museum as reported in the March 1964 issue of Gerald LK Smith's "Cross and the Flag";

http://files.christogenea.org/staropram ... nQuote.pdf

[EzraLB]

I honestly have never been convinced of the authenticity of that alleged quote from Benjamin Franklin concerning the Jews. For me, the language is all wrong--it does not sound like the way that the Founding Fathers spoke in the late 18th century. My guess is that it was written sometime in the 20th century.

Many of Franklin's speeches are available online--and his style of speaking in those speeches is very different from the style of this quote about the Jews. Just one example is that he often used the word "shall" whereas the quote in question uses the word "will" instead.

Two other words that bother me are "assimilated" and "segregated" in the context of race. That argument wasn't openly discussed until after the great flood of jewish immigrants arrived in the late 1800s--and it was a charge often leveled at the unassimilated Ashkenazi Jews by the assimilated Sephardic Jews who had been here much longer.

It must be kept in mind that the jewish population at Franklin's time was very small, and there would be absolutely no reason why he would somehow prophecy that eventually "millions" of them would be swarming our shores. I'm sure that he couldn't even imagine that there would one day be hundreds of millions of Whites in this country.

Also the veiled reference to Zionism--the jewish settlement of Palestine--seems anachronistic. It wasn't openly discussed in the 18th century, especially among the Sephardic Jews, who were the Jews in the colonies. It was the later Ashkenzais who made Zionism a part of the popular consciousness.

While it would be nice if Franklin did, in fact, make this speech, my instincts tell me otherwise.